Editor's note: Political reporter Leo Wolfson is on assignment in Montana covering the U.S. Senate race.
BOZEMAN, Mont. — The high stakes race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy is in some ways a battle of personalities and backgrounds.
Both candidates come with certain vulnerabilities that the other is trying to highlight and the political criticism is flowing freely between their supporters.
The Tester campaign has gone to great lengths to promote his dirt farm roots, while portraying Sheehy as a wannabe “rhinestone cowboy.” Conversely, Sheehy and his supporters say Tester only embraces his agricultural roots when the TV cameras are on.
The outcome of the race is likely to determine which party secures a majority in the U.S. Senate.
If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency but Sheehy also wins, it would still allow Republicans to block most of the legislation that Democrats want to get through.
Running as a Democrat in the solidly red state of Montana, Tester has attempted to distance himself from President Joe Biden and Harris, refraining from endorsing either candidate for president this fall and billing himself as a moderate Democrat who has strayed from the president on a few issues.
He also partnered with fellow Montana Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican who has endorsed Sheehy’s campaign, on an infrastructure bill earlier this year.
Still, Tester’s voting record shows he’s been in relative lockstep with the administration since it took over in 2021. Biden lost Montana by about 16 percentage points in 2020 and Harris isn’t expected to fare much better in her campaign.
U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, said Tester has not only consistently voted with the president, but also supported his nominees.
“He votes Washington liberal Democrat,” Barrasso said. “He was a rubber stamp for Biden, he was a rubber stamp for (former President Barack) Obama.”
Julia Shaida, chairman of the Gallatin County Democratic Party in Bozeman, is supporting Tester’s campaign and said she has no problem with him supporting the Biden administration, citing the infrastructure projects it’s helped get done throughout Montana.
“Montana has benefited so much from the policies of the Biden administration,” Shaida said.
Sheehy, on the other hand, has attempted to link himself to former President Donald Trump, who appeared at a Montana rally on his behalf in August and has endorsed Sheehy’s campaign. He has never served office before and moved to Montana in 2014.
The significance of the Tester-Sheehy race isn’t lost on Barrasso or Lummis.
The two Wyoming senators brought Sheehy and Daines to Teton County in August to help fundraise for Sheehy’s campaign. Barrasso called it the most successful fundraising event he’s ever had in Wyoming for a U.S. Senate candidate running in another state.
Barrasso also came to Montana to campaign against Tester in 2012 and 2018, and plans to do so again next month.
Out-Of-State Playing Card
One of the most common criticisms the Tester campaign has made against Sheehy is that he’s not a native of Montana.
Even some of Tester’s supporters like Shaida, who moved to Montana more recently than Sheehy in 2016, believe critiques like these are misplaced.
“I think we all need to get used to we all have freedom of movement in the United States,” she said.
Shaida would rather see Montana residents rally against efforts like giving tax breaks to the wealthy and support ideas like taxing more expensive residential properties at a higher rate. She believes tax breaks for the rich have contributed to the housing crunch in Bozeman, where urban camping has increased by around 200% in the last two years, according to PBS. Shaida said local studies have shown a significant number of these people are fully employed.
“There’s all these ways that Montana is ailing and the people of Montana are ailing right now so it’s easy to look at resentment of newcomers,” she said. “Or, you could look at how could we actually get some money from the newcomers to actually fund good life here and invest in the things we need here?”
Barrasso said the Tester campaign is fixating on Sheehy being a newcomer to the state because it doesn’t have much else to hang on him.
“Tester knows that Tester is wrong on the issues so he needs to find something he can try to attack Sheehy on and that’s about the best he can do,” Barrasso said.
Out-of-state backgrounds haven't stopped Montanans from electing others like Daines, U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale and Gov. Greg Gianforte.
Darin Gaub, a Helena resident and fifth-generation Montanan who is the chairman of the Lewis and Clark County Republican Central Committee, said it’s the principles of a candidate that matter most to him rather than how long they’ve lived in the state.
Wyoming, like Montana, saw many residents move in after the COVID-19, with some going as far as calling themselves “political refugees.”
Tester won his second reelection campaign against U.S. Rosendale by only about 18,000 votes in 2018. But Tester was leading in most polls throughout that race.
The most recent polls in his current race show him trailing Sheehy by about six percentage points.
Bozeman resident Jerry Gossel said he still has hope and said all of Tester’s races have come down to the last few days of the campaign.
“Tester’s races kind of always come down to the last day,” he said. “He’s won by the slimmest of margins so who knows?”
TV Farmer vs. ‘Wannabe Cowboy’
Sheehy officially became a rancher in 2020, helping start his Little Belt Cattle Co. shortly after selling his drone company, Ascent Vision Technology, for $350 million.
Many of Sheehy’s campaign ads show him in some kind of ranching setting.
And on his ranch, Sheehy has taken a bit of a nontraditional approach, using it for a variety of marketing and brand collaborations. One of these collaborations came with Schaefer Outfitter, a Wyoming-founded company that Sheehy modeled on social media to promote the brand’s “Yellowstone Collection.”
“We call it a wannabe cowboy,” Matt Rains, a fifth-generation Montana rancher, told Vanity Fair in January. “He bought his way in — and we’ve lost a lot of great ranchers to rich out-of-staters buying up land to add to their little collections, just like Sheehy has.”
Gaub countered that Tester is only “a farmer in his commercials.”
“Most people have seen beyond the curtain to where they know that what’s important is his function as a U.S. senator for the state of Montana,” he said. “In that he has abjectly failed and been a radical frankly his entire time. He’s hidden successfully for years but now he’s no longer able to hide.”
Get Out The Vote
Gaub believes the race not only represents the Republicans taking a majority in the Senate for the first time since 2020, but also America’s future. He believes the policies of the Biden administration have been extremely harmful to America and.
“Montana recognizes that to change the Senate is critical to getting constitutional governance back to America and away from where it’s currently going,” he said. “This has something that Montana can be part of fixing now.”
Even though Shaida believes Democratic values support rural and urban areas of Montana alike, the core of Montana’s Democratic support exists in its two major college towns of Bozeman and Missoula. Shaida wants to see the Tester campaign redouble its efforts in her city as a way to maximize the effect of people voting for her party up and down the ballot for all races.
“If you can get Democrats who were not really going to vote because they didn’t pay attention, if you can get them to vote, that’s a vote for Jon Tester,” she said. “So, we’re very big on lifting up the Democratic vote in the Bozeman area. Elections are won on enthusiasm.”
Questions Remain
There are also some questions about Sheehy’s voting record given that he doesn’t have one.
Other conservatives have expressed frustration that he earned Trump’s endorsement when Rosendale, who launched a short-lived campaign for the Senate seat in February, has served in both the Montana Legislature and Congress.
“The entire situation has left the grassroots saying, ‘OK, why are the decisions for who represents Montana now being made in D.C.?’” he said.
But Gaub said he doesn’t have concerns that issues like these will stop Republicans from voting for Sheehy.
“Even if you think you’re holding your nose to vote for Sheehy, you’re going to do it to get Tester out of where he never should be,” he said.
Some conservatives in Montana have also raised eyebrows about the groups that have supported Sheehy’s campaign and his businesses.
In 2022, capital market firm D.A. Davidson secured $160 million in bonds for Sheehy’s former company Bridger Aerospace, a deal representing one of the largest taxable nonrated municipal environment and social governance (ESG) bonds in the nation.
Shortly before his campaign started, Bridger Aerospace removed language from its website touting itself as “fighting on the front lines of climate change,” according to ABC News.
According to the Montana Free Press, Sheehy also holds between $50,000 and $100,000 in Cloverly, a self-described “sustainability as a service” company with software that allows companies to measure and offset their carbon output.
It was also revealed that he was previously a board member of the Property and Environment Research Center, a “free market environmentalism” nonprofit think tank.
Gaub believes two audio recordings that recently surfaced of Sheehy making disparaging remarks about Native Americans being drunk in the morning won’t impact the final result of the race. Native Americans make up about 6% of the state’s population.
“I don’t think it will have a big impact,” he said. “Most people’s minds are already settled when you start going down that road.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
